The New Odyssey and Cast Away review – stories from Europe’s refugee crisis

These detailed, passionate reports from journalists Patrick Kingsley and Charlotte McDonald-Gibson of perilous journeys across the Mediterranean aim at producing better policy through empathy

Spring is here, migration season in the Mediterranean. Warmer temperatures and fewer storms mean more boats putting out for Europe from Africa and Turkey. More boats mean more destitute migrants landing in Lesbos, Kos, Lampedusa – over 185,000 so far this year. More boats mean more wrecks, more losses: 100 people drowned or missing one April weekend, 500 the week before that, nearly 300 the month before.

How did these holidaymakers’ paradises become the scene of postwar Europe’s greatest humanitarian crisis? The Romans called the Mediterranean mare nostrum, “our sea”, cuddling it like a pet in Europe’s mighty arms. But to understand what is happening now, it helps to look at a map in Fernand Braudel’s epic history The Mediterranean, which turns the cartographer’s usual north-south orientation on its head. Africa plunges through the frame like a giant fist, bashing into snaggle-toothed Europe. By geographical rights, the Mediterranean is Africa’s sea. The disaster we are witnessing now, as two new books by journalists Charlotte McDonald-Gibson and Patrick Kingsley make clear, is what happens when right lacks might.

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